← The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusig, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. Sadly, religious freedom, especially for Christians, is under attack across the globe, including in the west, including right here in the United States. Whether insidiously in the form of diversity, equity and inclusion programs that block Christians from employment and advancement opportunities, or overtly block, like vandalism against churches, or in some parts of the world, murderous violence against Christians themselves. In terms of sheer numbers, and this is a fact often ignored, Christians are by far the most persecuted religious group in the world. While defending religious freedom is important for people of all faiths or no faith at all, it is thus especially urgent for believers in Christ. How then can we work together as a church and as a society to make progress on this front? Taking a step back, what specifically is religious freedom and why is it a universal human right? What is the relationship between the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech? And how can we respond to the secular charge that religious freedom is merely a backdoor means for the faithful to impose their beliefs on others? Here to help us understand the meaning and necessity of religious freedom and to discuss his own work defending it as part of the White House's Religious Liberty Commission is is Bishop Robert Barron. Bishop, welcome back to the studio.
- [01:35]
B
Thanks, Matt. Always good to be with you.
- [01:37]
A
So today we're discussing the importance of religious freedom, which, as you know well, has been under attack, especially for Christians in recent time. But before we get into that relatively heavy topic, what have you been up to lately?
- [01:50]
B
Well, one thing I've been working on is just to bring our synodal process to completion. So I sponsored a synod in our diocese looking at two things, evangelization and vocations. And we had several preliminary meetings around the diocese, different regions and parishes. Then we all came together last summer in Mankato, which is right in the center of my diocese. And we had a wonderful kind of two day celebration of the synod, which included liturgies, but also a lot of structured conversation, at the end of which there was various proposals were put forward, you know, voted on by the Senate. Then my job finally is to draw this together in a letter. So I'm finalizing that process right now. And the letter will come out, I hope, maybe the first Sunday of Advent. I'm not sure exactly when this show's gonna air, but it's a letter. I was thinking about this today. Not really for like the whole church. It's not, you know, Bishop Barron talks about evangelization. It's really for our diocese, so I'm gonna, you know, make it available. We'll probably print it up in some nice way or get it out electronically, but really it's for the people, our diocese, to help with these two key areas.
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A
What was your methodology for being able to take in so much information and to make that information useful to you?
- [02:58]
B
Yeah, well, there's a Synod team, and they assembled all the findings of the synod, and then they collated it in different ways and gave it to me. And I spent a couple of weeks working through all that and trying to summarize it in a way that respected what the synod said, but also to give it a certain particular direction for me. So it was a good process. And through that long, careful deliberation, I think we've come up with some good ideas.
- [03:25]
A
Let's now turn to the topic of religious freedom. So we'll be looking at religious freedom and its relationship to human dignity. But before you do, as many of our audience already know, you've been making regular Trips to Washington, D.C. to participate in the President of the United States Religious Liberty Commission. So let's start Bishop by. If you could give us some background on how this came about, this opportunity came about, and what kind of work you and those who are also on the commission commission do.
- [03:53]
B
Well, you know what, regarding the first question, my honest answer is I don't know, because out of the blue, I get this request came from the USCCB that the White House was looking for my phone number, which is a little bit alarming, actually. And I did. I said, what is the White House wrong with my phone number? Anyway, that was. The invitation was to be on this commission. How that happened, who recommended me, I don't know to this day. But the request came through, and, you know, I just thought, the President of the United States is asking me, a Catholic bishop, to be on an advisory committee helping him formulate policy about religious liberty, which we as bishops feel very strongly about. Why would I say no to that? So I said yes to the invitation. And we've had. I've been at two of the meetings. One just got called off because of the government shutdown. The next one is coming up fairly soon. I found them very interesting, the meetings. They're good. They're chaired by a guy named Dan Patrick, who is the. The Lieutenant Governor of Texas, and a lot of interesting people on this commission, including Franklin Graham, you know, Billy Graham's son, a number of legal experts and philosophers and so on. Rabbi Solovitchik, who was right at this table for one of my Bishop Barron presents programs, is on it. And I really enjoyed the sessions. They go all day, like kind of nine to three, and we listen to what they call witnesses. They bring people in to talk about. The first one was on the Founding Fathers in religious liberty, which is very interesting. And they had experts in the Constitution and in the Founding Fathers. The second one was on education. So how religious liberty is being threatened at different levels of our educational system. There's one in the. I think the one in the military is one that got called off. Now, whether we'll pick that up again, we'll see. I hope so.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But it's been a very interesting exercise. And, you know, just looking at areas where religious liberty seems to be under assault in our society, and then our job is to assess that and then make recommendations ultimately to the President.
- [05:51]
A
To the extent you're able to share any details, have you heard any stories that have really driven home how serious a threat there is right now to religious liberty both at home and abroad?
- [06:00]
B
Actually, in the session on education, they didn't bring in experts for the most part. They brought in kids. They brought in little kids, high school kids and college students to witness to ways that their religious liberty was threatened. One I remember was interesting was a young lady during the COVID period. People had the masks on, right? And her mask said, Jesus loves me. Right? Jesus loves me. So it wasn't telling anyone to believe in Jesus. It wasn't even saying Jesus loves you. It was just saying, jesus loves me or I love Jesus. There's something that referred right to her and was told by the teacher that she could not wear that mask. And kids had masks with every kind of crazy symbol, but an explicitly Christian expression was that was no good. There was another young man, I remember, who was part of a talent show, and he got up and he sang, I think it was at Christmas time, sang a Christian song, right? And was told that was inappropriate. You know, so it's that kind of, I mean, frankly, silly stuff where we so press this issue of the so called wall of separation, which is just Jefferson's, you know, peculiar formulation in a letter that he wrote. It's not something written in the Constitution.
- [07:19]
A
Not in the Constitution, no.
- [07:20]
B
It's not in the Declaration of Independence. But yet it became this sort of dominant metaphor, and in a way that's really problematic and a little bit silly. So we looked at a number of those cases and others too. So it's been a very interesting exercise.
- [07:34]
A
Before moving on deeper into religious freedom itself. Bishop, as you know, some from the very usual quarters have criticized you for being on this commission. Both you as Bishop Barron and you being a bishop in the category of bishop. What's your response to those critiques?
- [07:52]
B
I think it's ridiculous. And I go back to Father Hesburgh, and I'm dating myself here, but, you know, the great president of Notre Dame University from, like, the 1950s until the nineteen, late eighties, I think. 35 years president, and one of the most prominent Catholics in America, certainly in the 20th century. And Hesburgh served on 16 presidential commissions on various topics, most famously civil rights, starting with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Two Republicans, two Democrats. Sixteen presidential commissions. My argument is good enough for Hesburgh, good enough for me. You know, and my point there is, it doesn't mean that you're advocating one political point of view. It doesn't mean I'm a spokesman for the Trump administration. People have written to me say, now that you're in the Trump administration, I'm not in the Trump administration. I'm on a commission where the president has asked me and others to advise him in this matter. I'm not a spokesman. Right. I'm someone advising him. And so my answer is, why wouldn't I, as a Catholic bishop, want to be a voice around the table when this great issue is being discussed? So to me, it's a non issue. It's an invented quarrel.
- [09:12]
A
Yeah, well, everybody not addicted to outrage agrees with you.
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B
Right.
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A
Let's now dig deeper into the meaning of religious freedom itself and why it's a universal human right. So, Bishop, as you know, the Church has always implicitly recognized a right to religious freedom long before rights became popularized. However, Pope Paul vi, now Saint Pope Paul VI made an explicit defense of religious liberty during Vatican ii in his 1965 declaration, Dignitatis Humanae. So, Bishop, help us understand the Declaration's basic argument and its significance for both the Church and the world.
- [09:45]
B
You know, I maybe sum it up this way. It's oversimplifying a bit, but error has no rights. But erroneous people do. So beautiful. One of the great counter arguments was always classically expressed. Well, error has no rights. And so if you've got an erroneous philosophy or religion, well, then shouldn't you use state power to coerce people away from it and to coerce them in the direction of the right religion? Wouldn't that make sense? And God knows people have advocated that over the centuries. Right. Well, one of the great inspirations for it was John Courtney Murray, the Jesuit philosopher and theologian. And he, I think, would have put it just that way, that, yes, I agree, error has no rights, and error should be opposed whenever it can, however it can, except limited in this way that erroneous people have rights. So even if you're erroneous about your religion, and look, I'm a Catholic, I think anyone who's not a Catholic is to some degree or other erroneous in their religion. But does that mean, I think state power should be used to coerce them in the direction of Catholicism? No, because erroneous people have a dignity as a human being, as a child of God. And one of the most sacred dimensions of that dignity is this deep part of the soul where we make a decision about religion, about God, about how we worship. You might say the most serious and fundamental expression of our conscience is when it comes to religious questions. And so I don't have the right to use coercion to compel someone to believe what I believe. Argument, sure. Confident evangelization, of course. But to use coercion, especially coercion backed up by the state, is repugnant to this idea of human dignity. And I think that's the basic argument of dignitatus humana.
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A
And that's universal, all times, all places, independent of constitutions.
- [11:48]
B
Right. Right. Now it's enshrined in the more modern constitutions, which is a good thing. But the very fact, the document, they never do this casually bears that title, that human dignity is the opening move of that document because that's the ground for religious liberty. That's why John Paul II said it was the of our rights. And, you know, it's very interesting put now in the secular context, we talk about religious liberty as the first freedom because it's in the First Amendment that it's honored, you know. And so I think both in secular terms and religious terms, there's something primal about it, primordial, fundamental in our understanding of the human being that religious liberty belongs to us.
- [12:34]
A
You brought up conscience. Is freedom of conscience or liberty of conscience the same as religious liberty? Are there any distinctions there?
- [12:41]
B
Well, not entirely. I mean, the conscience has to do with your moral life in general, and the conscience should be free. I mean, if you talk about coercing someone in conscience, that's also a violation. You might say that religion is the most serious matter engaged by conscience, if I can dare use that old term. This sort of fundamental choice that you make for God, that belongs in the most sacred part of your personality.
- [13:10]
A
What about the relationship between freedom of speech and freedom of religion? Because some on the secular side argue we don't need freedom of religion. We already have freedom of speech that does all the work we need it to do.
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B
Well, no, but what obviates that is the. In the First Amendment is the free exercise of religion. So it's not just you've got the right to entertain your own religious ideas or even to speak them to one another, but you have a right to exercise your religion in the public sphere. Now, we can name maybe later limits to that, but the free exercise clause is overlooked very often. And if we just say, for example, freedom of worship or freedom of religious speech, that's not enough. It's gotta be a public space where religious convictions can be exercised, which indeed they were. You know, go back to the beginning of our republic, people were very much at home with the free exercise of religion. Now, it naturally caused certain conflicts, but we reached the point where it's like, oh, no, no, let it just be something you whisper among yourselves.
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A
Privatize.
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B
Yeah, that can't work because Christianity is not a private religion, it's a public religion. And so it's very important that our founding fathers, I think, phrase the First Amendment that way.
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A
Is it closely associated with the freedom of association as well?
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B
Yeah, I think so, yeah, because that's a public sort of act.
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A
So Paul Essex writes in the Declaration that I'm quoting him here, religious freedom is necessary to fulfill one's duty to worship God. What does the Pope mean by this? Linking religious freedom to worship in this way, and should we interpret that as meaning? Well, if we don't have religious freedom, then we can't worship God.
- [14:47]
B
Well, yeah, it means that if it's really worship of God, it can't be a coerced matter. You can't be coerced into worshiping God. It's something that comes from the very depth of your freedom. So to say God is the supreme value of my life. If I'm being coerced to worship in a way that's counter to that, well, that just violates my humanity. So in that sense. Right. Freedom belongs to the very heart of it. So freedom of worship, indeed is a great value. But we have to push beyond that to the free exercise. And in fact, that is a type of free exercise too, that I can gather in a public place and worship God. But I think it has to do with freedom belongs to the essence of religion, that without that, it's something else. It's devolved into something else.
- [15:36]
A
And conversely, if you're not free to worship, that's a great assault to who you are level of your humanity.
- [15:43]
B
Right. John Paul thing about freedom is this capacity to do as I ought. And what's the most fundamental thing that I ought to do? It's to order my life to God. So worship is the most fundamental. That's why in the Ten Commandments, what comes first is the commandments about God have no God besides me. You say, well, isn't that just kind of a weird cultic thing? No, no, that's entirely moral. That's entirely important. And not to take his name in vain and to worship him. Those are of the most fundamental moral significance. I heard Bill Maher recently and he was going about the Ten Commandments. I think there's only one that he liked. But he said, well, let's get rid of the first three. They have nothing to do with morality, is it not? They have everything to do with morality. So if I'm not free to worship, well, then my moral life is being compromised.
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A
They're the ground of morality.
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B
Right, right.
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A
So Pope Paul VI also writes, and this is sort of a summary of the meaning of religious freedom. A right to religious freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs or whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits. So I want to emphasize that within due limits, that's how he ends that clause. So on the one hand, Bishop, this sounds like the strongest statement as you could possibly get to defense religious freedom. But at the end he also says within due limits. So let's look at that. What do you think he has in mind when he's saying that there are limits to religious freedom?
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B
Yeah, and this comes up all the time in these debates. It came up in one of our sessions on the Religious Liberty Commission because I'm not claiming it as an absolute right. Let's say a person says, look, my religion calls for human sacrifice.
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A
Yeah, exactly.
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B
You know, and so you can't limit my religious freedom. And that's the way I worship God is by. Is by murdering human beings. Yeah. Torturing children is essential to my religious consciousness. Well, of course not. See the limit there would be the limit of what we call the natural law or the basic moral law. Within a more secular context, it's interesting, we would say religious liberty. Yes. Except for those things that are directly repugnant to the Constitution itself, then the government can indeed intervene to say, no, it's essential to my religion that you can't gather publicly or that you can't protest. That's basic to my religion. Or my religion says that you can't say those things. Well, in an American context we'd say, no, that's repugnant to the constitution. So in a moral context you'd say, yes, you have religious liberty, but limited by the demands of the moral law.
- [18:26]
A
You brought up human sacrifice as an extreme example to sort of illustrate the point. However, I have read articles that the pro choice movement does indeed think it can use religious liberty in order to justify a right to abortion. But from the context that you're laying out from Dignitatus Humanae, that's a non starter right?
- [18:46]
B
No, that's why the moral law is so important and why the maintaining of the natural law is so essential. When I was going through school, proportionalism was all the rage. Know well the view that there really are no objective, you know, goods and bads. It's simply a matter of gauging consequences. And you if there's a proportion between the good consequences and bad, well, but the trouble is is it just is such a slippery slope and such a collapsing mountain that there's nothing finally that you can say, look, that's wrong, you can't do that.
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A
Right.
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B
Or that's right, you have to do that. You can't say that. And so the moral enterprise collapses under the weight of proportionalism. So that's why it's so important that we have the natural law in place as a bulwark in this matter.
- [19:35]
A
Relatedly, a common criticism of religious freedom from the secular world is that it enables people of faith, kind of backdoor means, to be able to impose, that's the word oftentimes used, impose their religious beliefs on others. Say how the Catholic vision of religious freedom sort of provides a bulwark against that kind of misuse of it.
- [19:53]
B
Yeah, again, John Paul ii, the church never imposes. The Church proposes now has it imposed? Sure, it's done bad things and there have been bad people over the years, but ideally speaking, the Church doesn't impose, it proposes. So no, if I start aggressively imposing my religion on people, then that's against the principle of religious liberty. So I'm undermining myself. The Church though, should propose with confidence and with panache and should have the freedom to do that, to propose the faith, but never in a way that's aggressive or an imposition what more broadly.
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A
Does the principle of religious freedom teach us about the proper domains of civil authority on the one hand, and religious authority on the other. How does it adjudicate those two domains?
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B
Well, I think it has to tell the civil authority to back off. And in the measure, the civil authority becomes too aggressive and wants to kind of impose itself on religion. It's a way of keeping it at bay. You know, it's been argued that the separation of church and state. Famous. Oh, it's meant to protect the state from religion. Well, yeah, to some degree, but I think it's the other way around. Protect religion from the incursions of the state. And, you know, I think we've in our history largely have struck that balance. It's one of the motifs of American history, of how to read those things together. But you know, think of the great moral movements in our country. Abolition in the 19th century, civil rights, 20th century, were led by deeply religious people. You know, it was deeply believing Christians that led the abolitionist charge, deeply believing Christians like Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy who led the civil rights movement. So that's a way that civil life, religious life came together in a way that wasn't coercive. It wasn't one imposing on the other. I always think of King, Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial giving the great I have a dream speech. So here's a religious figure. He was a Christian minister on the steps of Lincoln's memorial. Lincoln, an American president. And in that speech he invokes American themes like mad. And we hold these truths to be self evident. And he sings great Christian hymns. He's mixing the two together in a way that was so powerful. And it wasn't one imposing on the other, it was one enforcing the other. That's why that speech is such a masterpiece, why it's so revered. Because King got that. He lived in that space very comfortably. But my own view I'm gonna go off on Wokeism again is we've forgotten a lot of that. We've forgotten Martin Luther King. And look at in the woke movement, how anti religious it's become, right where in King's time the great moral movement was led by religious people as it was in the 19th century. And some of that has fallen apart. And that's regrettable.
- [22:42]
A
So another key line in Dignitate Simone, which you've already alluded to, is this line. The truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power. So Bishop, how does this understanding of the nature of truth in relation to religious freedom, that truth cannot be imposed on others, how does that compare with the secular conception of truth that declares, you have your truth, I have mine?
- [23:09]
B
Right. See, that's just that silly relativism that leads to terrible mischief in all kinds of ways, because what dignitatus humanae is assuming is there is something like truth, and it really is true. And. But when it's proposed in a persuasive way, it has enormous power. So it's not a relativism by any means. Like, well, you got your religion, I got mine. Let's just tolerate each other. Not at all. It's calling for in that passage, something like evangelization, but evangelization in a spirit of love, but the power of the truth. It's assuming there is something very densely textured about truth. And again, Wokeism has led us to this ridiculous relativism, which then has given way to this Nietzschean battle of wills. I mean, all of that is on display in Wokeism, and it's the opposite of what's on display there.
- [24:01]
A
We also see something similar, and you've brought this up on many occasions. Justice Kennedy's line in Obergefell vs Hodges in 2015, where he says that we have a freedom ground in the Constitution to define one's own concept of existence.
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B
Oh, you know, that's Cayce versus Planned Parenthood.
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A
Oh, is that Casey versus 92? Oh, okay.
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B
Although Obergefell, you're right, I mean, is predicated upon that.
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A
Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, that line. That line. We have the freedom to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe and the mystery of human life. Now, a secularist could say that is religious freedom. But you're arguing that. No, that's a false understanding of religious freedom.
- [24:38]
B
No, it's just silly. That's one of the dumbest statements made ever in the history of the U.S. supreme Court. And I would say, not just dumb, it has as nefarious an impact as Dred Scott in the 19th century, I think, because if you say, oh, I make up meaning I make up value. You make up meaning you make up value. Who knows? You know? Well, what does that lead to? That leads to a complete falling apart of society. There's no more cohesiveness. There's no more shared truth. You're locked in your worldview, I'm locked in mine. And the best we can do is vaguely tolerate each other. But. But, see, that whole scenario is haunted by Friedrich Nietzsche. The minute you Say, oh, I'm beyond good and evil, there's no objective truth. It's all a matter. Then you have indeed, as Nietzsche quite correctly saw, simply a play of wills. And I think it's on display everywhere today in our society. I think that was a harbinger of much of the mischief of wokeism, that statement from 1992. And it's given rise to this not just litigious society, but this deeply divided society. And we've lost our social cohesiveness. All we see is the negative side of unity. We don't see the positive side. You know, if you look at the one of the many, I would subscribe to the view that all the philosophy is, it begins with the problem, the one of the many, okay, the one by itself can become tyrannical and oppressive. The many by itself can become just, you know, fissiporous when I look only at the negative side of the one and all I see is tyranny. Right, oppressive. It has that dimension if it's one sidedly emphasized. But I overlook completely the positive side of the one, which is what brings us together, unites us. We've so valorized the many. Pluralism's always good, diversity is always good. The many, many, many. Right. Well, diversity is good in some circumstances. But if that's all I talk about, then I have the fissiporous society. Everything is falling apart. But see, that's what haunts a lot of that language of it's all up to me, it's all up to you. There's no objective, that's dangerous talk.
- [26:56]
A
Is it fair to say so? Kennedy's locating his reasoning as emanating from the Constitution. But if we take his reasoning to its logical conclusion doesn't undermine any kind of constitutional order.
- [27:07]
B
Absolutely. And it's not from the Constitution at all. It's not from the Founding Fathers. They would not have had that view at all. They weren't Thomas Aquinas, but they certainly had a strong sense of God and of moral purpose and of shared goals and so on. They would never have adopted that kind of silly relativism.
- [27:27]
A
So we can see pretty clearly how secularism can be a threat to religious liberty. But how about some faulty understandings of religion? How can religion or bad understanding of religion also undermine religious liberty?
- [27:40]
B
Well, I suppose if it gets aggressive, if religion becomes imperialistic and overbearing and aggressive, and again failing to make the distinction between error and erroneous people. So if you've got an error in your mind, I'm justified in oppressing you. Or excluding you or no, no, you're a person of infinite value. You've got an error in your mind. And I'm going to try the best I can to change your mind. But I suppose that's the danger is an aggressive religiosity. And God knows, over our history we've seen that in different ways. Not so much now, it's the other problem now. But in history, to be fair, there have been expressions of Christianity that have been aggressive and indifferent to people's dignity. So that's the danger from religion.
- [28:29]
A
So let's now move to some practical approaches to protecting and advancing religious liberty and start at the rhetorical level. So, Bishop, what's in a nutshell? What's the best way to frame advocacy for religious liberty? That both has the audience of sort of a secular west on the one hand, but also countries that allow for the practice of one religion but not others.
- [28:53]
B
Human dignity. Dignitatis humanae. We gotta go right back to that human dignity. So I would make the appeal right away to the dogmatic claims of the Church. I'd make appeal to this anthropology. Cause I think that should appeal to everybody. And think here of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, 1948. Think of other great statements of the Western democracies that have tried to express basic human rights rights and recognizing that religious liberty is the first. Again, that's John Paul ii. So I would begin with anthropology, as he often did. Remember, he said that the trouble with the 20th century was bad anthropology, which I think is dead. Right. So I would emphasize human dignity.
- [29:36]
A
Is it also fair to say that without religious freedom, all other human rights will eventually collapse?
- [29:42]
B
Yes, and I think that's right, both from a religious standpoint and a secular standpoint. And we bring that up a lot at the Religious Liberty Commission. It's the first of the rites, not just sort of chronologically, but ontologically. Because if you undermine religious freedom, well, then why not go after the other rites, too? You've attacked the foundation of the conscience, so how about the rest of the conscience while you're at it? So, yes, I think that's true.
- [30:04]
A
What are some policy or even, you say, governmental approaches that we can take to protecting religious freedom, especially drawing on the work that you're doing right now in the commission?
- [30:15]
B
Yeah, and we're kind of wrestling with that right now. That's getting into the practicalities of it. You know, I think one thing, Matt, is overcoming this tendency within our jurisprudence beginning in the mid 20th century of hyper stressing the Jeffersonian Wall of separation. And you see it, as I say, in the jurisprudence moving through the decades where by the time I was, let's say, a teenager or young man. Oh, yeah, it just seems, of course, you can't have prayer in schools, or of course you couldn't read from the Bible in that setting. Or of course, you can't have the Ten Commandments, that at a courthouse where no one in the 19th century or late 18th would have accepted any of that, but we began to accept it because of, I would say, certain exaggerated jurisprudence after the middle of the 20th century. So one thing is to. This is William F. Buckley at a debate many years ago where he argued, is it time to lower the wall of separation, not eliminate it, but is it time to lower the wall of separation? And I think the answer to that is yes, that wall had become exaggeratedly high. And so to allow, go back now to the Constitution, the free exercise of religion, that my exercising my Christianity in a public way is not necessarily a threat to you if you're a non Christian, not necessarily an attack on you. So those are things that we can do. Maybe try to lower that wall, not eliminate it, but lower it ahead.
- [31:38]
A
Finally, Bishop, as the founder of Word on Fire, why is religious freedom so important for evangelists and also in evangelization, evangelizing with religious freedom?
- [31:48]
B
Right. Because if. If I'm not addressing someone who's really free, I'm not evangelizing them, I'm coercing them, or I'm imposing something, or I'm using secular power to constrain them. No, no, it's tied to evangelism. You can only address, in an evangelically powerful way, free people. If they're not free, you will not evangelize them. But also I'd say that I, thank God, live in a society that allows me to evangelize as we're doing right now. No one from the government's intervening to stop us. We're in a lot of places around the world right now. We could not do what we're doing. So thank God. I say that as an American. Thank God for our system that allows us to do it.
- [32:39]
A
It's now time for our listener question. Today we have Fadi from San Diego asking about how we can grow in confidence that Catholicism is the one true religion.
- [32:51]
B
Hi, Bishop Barron. My name is Fadi. I'm from San Diego. My question is how can we be certain that the Catholic faith, faith is the one true religion, given that we could have done something wrong in the process or something could have happened in the history where information got delivered to us in the wrong way, maybe like the Gospels were not true or something happened. How can we go beyond inferring it's the one true religion to be certain it's the one true religion? Thank you. Yeah. It's a deep question and a complicated one. You know, I use this example or comparison. If you say I accept Einstein's theory of relativity as the best understanding of the physical reality of the universe, why do you hold that? Well, it's very hard to answer that in a very short way. You'd say probably something like, well, there's this and there's this and there's this about it and there's that about it and there's this about it, all of which are true. All of which seem to jive with reality. Right? And it's been tested here and here and here and there and there. And compared to other systems, it is far more explanatory. Now, I know as I say this, there are now post Einsteinian views of physics, okay? But my point is, with any system, whether it's religious or scientific or whatever, you test it against reality. And you say, okay, that makes sense. And that makes sense. And that makes sense. You know, Chesterton said that there's a thousand ways into the church, there's a thousand doors you can enter, but what all the paths have in common is they're all true. You know, and I would say that about Catholicism is looked at from all these different angles. And I've been at it for a long time and watching how it just. It coheres, it comes together, all the different elements of it fit. I can't give you, like, a neat Cartesian answer, like, well, here's the syllogism. A, then B, and therefore C. It's more of a something you live your way through, and you keep testing it against reality, and you're finding it again and again and again the most persuasive, beautiful fit to reality. I remember I was teaching a course in the post liberal some years ago, and they say, how do you know something is true? And they said, well, think about, like, a map. How do you know a map is true? Well, it got me where I wanted to go. So how do you know Christianity is true? It's getting me where I want to go, right? As I'm searching for God, it's getting me there. I. I've tried it. The map works. Something like that, I think, is the way to approach that question.
- [35:44]
A
Well, thank you, Fadi, for reaching out to us. If you would like to ask Bishop Barron a question in a future Word on Fire show, please visit askbishopbarron.com again, that's askbishopbarron.com as you can see, we always love to hear from you. So, Rich, as always, Bishop, thank you.
- [35:59]
B
Thanks, Matt. Always good talking to you.
- [36:00]
A
See you next time. All right, that does it for us today. Thanks for joining us on the Word on Fire Show. If you're interested in learning more about how Word on Fire can help you grow closer to Christ, become a better evangelist with and for others, and work for the common good, consider joining the Word on Fire Institute. Check us out at institute.WordPress.org that's institute.WordPress.org See you next time.